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Stretching/Meridians
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Greetings to all,
Please excuse the use of a translation program. For this reason I have provided the English version also.

I am doing some personal research into stretching and specifically "Meridians Stretching". I have found a number of articles on the internet and some interesting information from "Acu-Yoga" which seems to combine yoga asanas with Shiatsu; I am waiting for a book to look into this more.

One reason for my interest is the type of warm-up we do at our dojo which incorporates many "Do-In" warm-up activities with regular/western stretches. I will classify them these (Do-In) since they appear in Japanese "health" books I have found, and are in many ways very different from the western athletic type procedure that, as a coach, I have used with athletes.

Over the past few years we have been doing more warm-up and soft techniques at the beginning of our two hour classes. In these warm-up periods we will do our standard warm-up and then do some "soft" techniques when instead of going to a throw we will go into a stretch for our uke.

These we learnt from Asai Sensei on his visits here.

I am looking for information from anyone who does this type of stretching activity and the similarities between these and yoga/meridian stretches.

I was wondering if out there in the ocean of Aikido knowledge could anyone help me with some info or leads.

I am looking for information from anyone who does this type of stretching activity and the similarities between these and yoga/meridian stretches.

I was wondering if out there in the ocean of Aikido knowledge could anyone help me with some info or leads.

Thanks
Andrew

Well the meridian stretching we do in the Ki Society as part of our warmups in Aikido classes is known as Makko-ho .
So you might want to google on that.
It's a practice that Tohei Sensei has been doing for decades and appears also in the Tempukai (Tempu Nakamura, founder of Japanese Yoga).

"Well the meridian stretching we do in the Ki Society as part of our warm-ups in Aikido classes is known as Makko-ho ."

Yes I should probably correct myself that Makko-ho is what we do. I think, although I could be mistaken that Makko-ho would fall within the general domain of Do-In.

I have found a great deal on this in the literature and on the Internet.

"It's a practice that Tohei Sensei has been doing for decades and appears also in the Tempukai (Tempu Nakamura, founder of Japanese Yoga)."

"also common to kiatsu which is also known as Yuki"

I have Tohei Sensei's book "Kiatsu" and it does address warm-up and meridians for Kiatsu but what I am looking for is the more dynamic stretches such as a movement into a technique where the Nage , instead of throwing the Uke takes him/her into a stretch, and if those work the meridians to promote the flow and alleviate blockages of Ki

Do you discuss meridians in your Dojo?I have only visited a Ki Society Dojo once.

I remember practicing something similar to this when I did some Aikikai training under Clyde Takeguchi of Capital Aikikai in Silver Spring, MD. He would take us through techniques that ended up in a back stretch most times. The techniques used were mainly Sokumen, Irimi Nage and Shi Ho Nage, with Uke relaxing into the back stretch.

From my personal experience in doing Shiatsu, Makko Ho and Qigong, I realised that these stretches in Aikido had some close relation to meridian theory. In many cases an elongation of the Conception Vessel meridian, and those of the upper chest area (Lung, Heart etc.) was revealed in the case of the back stretches, allowing blockages to be cleared through correct breathing.

In Shodokan we do a cool down stretch (I've seen this done in Judo too) where 2 people stand back to back and one person pulls the other's arms forward and above his head and sinks his weight, flattening his back. This way the other person is lying atop the other's back, stretched out along his partner's spine. This is great for releasing blockages in the meridians along the back, especially the Bladder and Kidney meridians in my experience.

Not pretending to be a professional at this, but these have been a few observations that I have made during training. Hope it helps.